Marysville shares info on 88th Street upgrades
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, January 14, 2026
MARYSVILLE — The city of Marysville will undertake a major construction project along 88th Street in the north end of the city as it seeks to make the road safer for drivers and pedestrians.
The road, long a part of unincorporated Snohomish County before the city annexed the area in 2010, was built as a two-lane rural road. The city has “outgrown” the road, city project manager Steven Miller said, which is used as an east-west arterial street in the fast-growing city. Much of the road has no sidewalks, and there are no bike facilities along it.
A $12.5 million upgrade to the street will add a middle turning lane while retaining the two existing travel lanes. It will also add walking and cycling paths to both sides of the road, complete with landscaping barriers separating pedestrians from traffic. Intersections along the street will also see crosswalk improvements.
Much of the funding for the improvements came from state and federal grants, staff said.
The project is split into two phases: Phase one, set to take place between State Avenue and 55th Avenue NE, and phase two, set to take place between 55th Avenue NE and 67th Avenue NE. Construction is set to begin on first phase within the next four months, staff shared at a town hall Tuesday, and will continue through 2027. Phase two’s construction is expected to begin in 2029, with completion coming in 2030, Miller said.
City staff said they contemplated expanding the street to five lanes total — two going each direction with a turn lane in the center — but that option would have required the city to buy out a row of houses along the street, making it prohibitively expensive.
“Ultimately, this is a corridor that has a lot of houses along it. We want to make it definitely pedestrian, bicycle friendly,” Marysville’s public works director, Jeff Laycock, said at the town hall. “We know that the corridor with the three lanes that we are improving is going to have a tremendous impact on safety along the corridor as well.”
Laycock said that the street was prone to collisions from people attempting to turn left, as the road does not have a middle turn lane.
Construction for phase one of the project will not require any road closures, Laycock said. Instead, contractors will perform the work on one half of the street, shifting traffic to the other half. Traffic will most likely shift to the north side of the street first, with construction beginning on the south side, but the final decision is up to the contractor, said Brian Mcgee, the design lead for the project.
The intersection of State Avenue and 88th Street will also see construction improvements in the coming years, staff at the open house said, as part of a separate project.
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
